More LYC: I was going to post a summary of my trip bookings and ended up cancelling one and changing it this morning which has only added to the story -- (edited)
Posted by
oblique (aka kkuphal)
Feb 19 '20, 05:17
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So, I spent most of last night organizing and optimizing our bookings for our travel to Dallas in June. My daughter is attending a summer camp at the University of Northern Texas. The plan was for her to fly down on Sunday herself and then we would come down on Thursday, see whatever performance they have on Friday, and then all fly out together on Saturday. This left quite a bit of travel to book as well as options.
I knew from previous reading that British Airways ORD to DFW falls into this "sweet spot" for travel. BA does distance based bookings and only charge 9k points where AA or United are more in the 12k->18k range minimum. I was able to confirm that BA had a flight that worked for us all to fly out on Saturday. 27k points. Easy transfer from Chase and done.
But, that meant I had to book some other one-way travel which sometimes screws you.
In this case, it as worked out exceptionally well. I have something like 80k miles on United and 40k points on Chase. The one-way ticket for my daughter on Sunday morning fell nicely into their 12k mile slot. That's solid. For my wife and I it wasn't so easy.
We needed to travel Thursday afternoon because of her work. Our options were (per person)
- 3pm United Award - 21k miles
- 3pm United Cash - $210
- 3pm United Chase portal - 14k points
- 3pm United Chase portal - $210 cash
Now, you can already see United is screwing us a bit by booking award direct with miles (even though I have them) so I'd rather not piss away 7k (x2) miles. And even though I upgraded my card to Reserve, I didn't want to just pay cash and get reimbursed. We have other travel expenses to hit the $300 credit and I have the 28k Chase points. So, Chase it is. I decided this on the way to work this morning after booking it with cash last night. I considered booking Economy premium but it was going to be $55/ticket. I opted not to.
This is the fun part. So, I cancel the flight, rebook this morning with the Chase portal, go to edit our seats on United and United offers me Economy Plus for $29/ticket. Um, yes.
So at the end of the day, I've spent $16 (BA), $5 (United) and $58 (United economy plus) and a total of 55k points for 3 of us to fly back and forth to DFW in June. Two of us will be in Economy Plus. Also seems that DFW has some nice Priority Pass lounge options for us so we will get to try out that new Chase perk as well. My wife and I can probably also take advantage of the United Club on the way there using my 2 free passes from my Explorer card.
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